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Help Grainy Pic S5 pics

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pasqo83

Well-Known Member
Hi

I love my S5 but noticed pics at night are extremley grainy.
I've looked online for any support but no-one has seem to have this issue.

Im looking at reviews and pics in low level night which seem to look really good for this phone but my S5 are not even close to these type of pics.

I have tried playing with the settings and can't seem to find what I want (not sure what Im looking for but just don't believe for a second these are my typical pics at night time for this type of phone).

Has anyone experience this? Is there a better camera app than the stock cam app?

Probably a silly question, the bottom right hand corner of the cam, at night it shows a night symbol as well, I assume this means night mode, is this an automatic feature or can I choose to turn this to day/night (just wanted to see if this even made a difference as well).
 
Can you post some examples?

I don't own an S5, but the Anandtech review mentions toggling the night mode setting (which I believe is called "picture stabilisation" now, if you are having trouble finding it in the settings).
 
I have an S5, in no reviews that I saw (Probably around 25 or so) did they ever say the camera in low-light was going to be good.

Literally all of them said it was going to be sub-par while the pictures in normal light, and outside look amazing. I've found those reviews to be completely accurate while also testing my phone over the past week, so there really isn't much you can do about the camera in low-light. Sad, but true! :)
 
Hadron said:
Can you post some examples?

I don't own an S5, but the Anandtech review mentions toggling the night mode setting (which I believe is called "picture stabilisation" now, if you are having trouble finding it in the settings).
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I've found that this options helps, but not by much. That's my experience with it anyway! :p
 
Hadron said:
Can you post some examples?

I don't own an S5, but the Anandtech review mentions toggling the night mode setting (which I believe is called "picture stabilisation" now, if you are having trouble finding it in the settings).
Click to expand...


I will post pics later tonight to show you what I mean. Ah I will have to look at the pic stabilisation, that may have been the reason.

Basically I went to take a pic of my mrs holding her friends dog and then a pic of a group of friends and it came out grainy, I was actually quite shocked as if to say am I really holding a modern phone?!

I had to use my partners phone (iphone 5) and the pic came out good, as in you wouldn't complain about it as it wasn't grainy like my one, so was just expecting a similar result if not better.

I guess if my judgement would have been if I compared cameras between an Iphone 5, HTC M8, S5 taken at night, they should at least all look about the same and you wouldn't be dissapointed by the standard right?
 
Here are 2 pics I did.
tugaha7a.jpg
ysagarun.jpg
 
Yeah, those look terrible lol. My low light photos aren't great, but I feel mine would take better photos then THAT.. Especially for that second photo where there is a light source literally in the shot to the right haha
 
The resizing has stripped the exif data (if the S5 included it), but I'm guessing that's very low light. There's a lot of noise despite the S5's aggressive noise reduction, and I'm not certain it was able to focus the second shot (though it's been so blurred by the processing that it's hard to tell). I admit those are the most extreme I've seen from the S5, but of course people may not post the very worst even in reviews so I can't say for sure there's anything abnormal.

Was the phone's "flash" turned off? Turning it on should help with close-up pictures like these.

No phone will be good in these conditions though. But in really low light the small pixels of the S5 will give you a worse signal to noise. The iPhone's larger pixels will collect about 50% more light each than the S5's, so while sensor technology and image processing differences will also matter at some point you'd expect it to have an advantage. That's the cost of having high resolution in a small sensor (and all phone sensors are small). You get the benefit when the light is good, but it's hard to optimise for all conditions.
 
The 2nd pic I was in a lit up room, I focused the pic and took the shot, it may have been my fault for the slight blur of movement, but I thought for the technology out today, you'd just expect it to be at least decent regardless of low light or not. Plus to be a newer model to the iphone 5, you'd expect the camera quality to be at least on par. Don't want to compare because imo I think the S5 is by far the best phone I've owned to date, just really dissapointed with the evening camera because now if I plan to use it in the evening and see pics come up like this, it's almost like what is the point of taking the pic.
 
How well lit was the room? The human eye adapts better to low light than a phone camera sensor, and if you measure light levels in a lit room with a meter you might be surprised by how much dimmer than outdoor daylight it really is.

That said, if that was actually a well lit room then I'd expect the phone to do better than that. The picture is very noisy, to the extent that camera shake is the least of the problems. The one thing I can think of is to check any exposure-related settings the phone may have - I don't know the S5 camera app so am not sure what options it has, but anything which might affect shutter speed, any exposure compensation settings or iso settings, in case there's something been set which is forcing it to use a higher ISO than necessary.

High ISO is equivalent to using a more sensitive film (for those who remember film). It basically means turning up the gain in the sensor readout, which also amplifies noise. It's necessary to do this in low light, but it results in a noisier image. So the question is whether there's any setting which is making it use a higher ISO than is needed, and hence producing a noisier image? I'm just guessing here, but it's the one thing I can think of that might explain it being excessively noisy (apart from having something over the lens that's absorbing some of the light).

The other thing is to try the flash and see whether it helps (though I understand not wanting to use that - I prefer available light photography myself).
 
I had the same issue at first. I turned off stabilization and that helped a lot. And then a couple of days later I found that I had never taken the clear sticker off over the camera shutter on the back of the phone. It was a "stupid me" moment. Turned out my wife didn't notice hers was still on either. :)
Steve
 
steveFTC said:
I had the same issue at first. I turned off stabilization and that helped a lot. And then a couple of days later I found that I had never taken the clear sticker off over the camera shutter on the back of the phone. It was a "stupid me" moment. Turned out my wife didn't notice hers was still on either. :)
Steve
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ROFL!!! :D That's awesome haha
 
I have the same issue. I had two phones last night at a concert (S5 and 5S.) Both phone camera apps had HDR enabled. Both on auto. Tapped the screen to focus on both photos. The goal was to do a real life comparison on what phone takes a better photo with the least amount of messing around with settings. There is not a 'night mode' setting on the S5. Curious why they would pull those settings from the phone.

I have a photo to show the difference. But, I can't post links or photos because my membership to this forum is new.
 
steveFTC said:
I had the same issue at first. I turned off stabilization and that helped a lot. And then a couple of days later I found that I had never taken the clear sticker off over the camera shutter on the back of the phone. It was a "stupid me" moment. Turned out my wife didn't notice hers was still on either. :)
Steve
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Lol... My first 30 to 40 some odd photos had that plastic protector on too... lolz
 
jcphillips said:
There is not a 'night mode' setting on the S5. Curious why they would pull those settings from the phone.
Click to expand...
It's called "stabilisation" on the S5 (which doesn't have actual optical stabilisation), though from what I've read it's closer to an HDR technique (combines multiple exposures). Seems a misleading name, given that the term stabilisation has an established meaning in photography, but it was probably chosen by marketing...
 
OMG.....I am so glad I checked out this forum. I too still had the plastic protector on my lens. I actually laughed out loud. I have not been able to take good pics of concerts..they come out all blurry and the stage lights are all glare. I will be seeing a concert this weekend and am trying to learn how to take decent pics of it. It doesn't seem like the ISO can be changed tho. Thanks every one for the tips :)
 
I have noticed bad light pics I have had better results from other apps but there is a lot of noise on the black levels I'm going to test my older s3 to see if that's as bad
 
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